When Neocons Lie For War

By Steve Hynd

The Flynt-Leveretts have responded to the lies of neoconservative hacks Tim Smith and Jeffrey Goldberg which I mentioned yesterday, and done so in fine style. Read the whole thing if you want the detail of their rebuttal of Smith's unsourced and unsubstantiated allegations, but their last paragraph bears repitition.

This kind of McCarthyite tactic was used by Mr. Goldberg, among others, in the run up to the Iraq war, in a largely successful effort to ensure that there was no serious questioning of the lies about Iraqi WMD and links to Al Qaida that Mr. Goldberg, among others, worked hard to disseminate. We will continue to do our best to ensure that Mr. Goldberg, Mr. Smith, and others like them do not get away with such profound and dangerous dishonesty this time around.

That's really the heart of the Iran matter. Whether they're looking to bend the Obama administration or feel that the next incumbent of the White House will be a Republican looking to hang his second term on a Bush-style war of choice, the neo-whatevers have definitely upped their level of hype over Iran again. They're not going to play nice and they fully intend to be shrill. Trying to remain calm and academic didn't work for anti-war voices last time.

Matt Duss, who has been one of the very best for many years at countering the War party's lurid claims, has yet another instance of flat lies in support of eventual war on Iran.

A Washington Post editorial today calling on President Obama to implement gas sanctions against Iran contains this falsehood:

[F]or every expert who argues that a shortage of gasoline would somehow help Mr. Ahmadinejad, there is one who believes it will deepen popular rejection of the regime.

That�s simply untrue. There�s actually a very substantial agreement among experts that gas sanctions will be an ineffective and potentially counterproductive tool against Iran, and that any anti-government sentiment they generated would likely be overwhelmed by nationalist solidarity in the face of outside pressure.

Why are the neocons so gung-ho to push gas sanctions? Because they know such sanctions will need a naval embargo if they are to be effective, an act of war.

At a recent event at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, two leading Iran experts, WINEP�s Patrick Clawson and Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations, came out against gas sanctions. Citing the difficulty of enforcing them, Clawson said the U.S. should �not adopt a sanction on gasoline imports into Iran unless we are prepared to sink Venezuelan ships carrying that gasoline� because it�s going to make [the U.S.] look impotent.�

The short-term result of gas sanctions, the experts agree, will be to push the Iranian populace into the hardliner's camp. In the longer term, the result will be a shooting war - possibly with more than one nation. For the neocons, that's a feature rather than a bug.